Tag: Syria
Not the deep state
Yesterday’s testimony in Congress by America’s intelligence elite was dramatic: it contradicted President Trump’s ill-founded opinions on Iran, ISIS, North Korea, Russia, and China. Iran, the intel chiefs said, is still observing the nuclear deal. ISIS is not gone from Syria or Iraq. North Korea will not give up its nuclear weapons, which Kim Jong Un views as vital to regime survival. Russia not only interfered in the 2016 election but is expanding its efforts. China’s economic difficulties are not due to America’s tariffs. It is almost as if they decided, with Ben Franklin, that we all hang together or we all hang separately.
Trump remained unimpressed. He denounced them all for failing to agree with their master. The President thinks he knows better. He is unwilling to entertain even the possibility he might be wrong. This is ignorance compounded with lack of intelligence. Only a profoundly stupid and lazy person would fail to ask himself why so many well-informed and manifestly intelligent people disagree, even at peril of losing their jobs. The notion that they would do it to protect their country from its greatest security risk–the man in the Oval Office–is anathema to Trump. He recognizes only egotism as a motive, since that is the only one he knows.
Fortunately, the Congress is moving for good reason to hem Trump in. You don’t have to think the US should stay in Syria or Afghanistan forever to believe that Trump’s tweeting and leaking of precipitous withdrawals is unwise. American diplomats needed more time than the President gave them to get a decent price for shipping out and making sure that whoever fills the vacuum will not put the US at risk. Pretending that North Korea will exchange its nukes and missiles for Trump-like hotel developments is silly.
Trump’s meeting with President Putin in Buenos Aires last November with no US officials present was revealed today. This is not just a breach of protocol. It is profoundly dangerous, since Moscow knows more about the meeting than Washington. Only a neophyte maverick would allow himself to be trapped into such a meeting, unless of course the purpose was to get instructions from Putin. Which do you prefer, a President who is embarrassingly unsophisticated or a President who qualifies as a Russian dupe or maybe even agent?
There is another explanation: that Trump enjoys defying convention and is happy to see his name in the headlines, no matter the occasion. No publicity is bad publicity for him and Roger Stone, who is blabbering himself into a lifetime in prison. Trump’s eldest son, Don Jr., looks set to follow him soon, as he was also enmeshed with Wikileaks during the campaign and lied to Congress about it. The missing link is evidence that the President was privy to or even ordered the contacts with the Russians that led to the publication of the Democratic National Committee’s emails. But there too doubts are hard to harbor: he appealed to Moscow in public to hack Hillary’s emails. Putin gave Trump the closest approximation within his control, in precisely the time frame Don Jr. favored.
President Trump really is America’s greatest security risk today. The intelligence people I know would find that proposition appalling but incontrovertible. Are they aiming to unseat him before he does much more damage? Their well-founded, professional testimony to lawmakers who have that power is one more step in the right direction: removing a president who is endangering the United States.
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The foreign policy process is broken
The Center for Strategic and International studies ( CSIS) held a discussion January 23 focused on effects of the US withdrawal from Syria and Afghanistan there, in the region and on US national security. The panel included Jon B. Alterman, Senior Vice President and Director of the Middle East Program, Melissa Dalton, Senior Fellow and Deputy Director of the International Security Program and Director of the Cooperative Defense Project, Seth G. Jones, Harold Brown Chair and Director of Transnational Threats Project and the Senior Adviser to the International Security Program, and Nancy Youssef, National Security Correspondent for The Wall Street Journal.
Alterman claims that what is troublesome about the US moving out of Syria is reduced control over what it leaves behind, compromising its leverage in the negotiations about the future of Syria. Trump could have negotiated terms of US withdrawal to get concessions from Syria, Russia, Turkey, Iran, and Kurds. The immediate and unconditional exit makes the parties do their own deals, with US interests ignored. President Trump has wanted to withdraw but people surrounding him did not. National Security Adviser John Bolton announced last September that the US is staying in Syria as long as Iran troops are there. Alterman added that this shows the broken system: the president does not consider the various options presented to him, and the government does not follow his directions. The President is issuing tweets or making statements that generate reactions because policy is not agreed.
Syria remains crucial for the US, according to Dalton. She claimed that what happens in Syria has wide implications elsewhere. The terrorism threat is still looming, along with the refugee and humanitarian crisis. It is thus hard to forecast the negative effects of this conflict on the region and Europe. US competitors like Russia and Iran can easily fill the gap left behind, increasing their sphere of influence in the region. Worse, the long-standing principle prohibiting the use of chemical weapons against civilians and facilities is eroding. Dalton asserts that the recent public opinion polling by Pew shows that half of Americans do not believe the US has achieved its objectives in Afghanistan. The majority also suggests US should be pulling out of Syria.
Jones noted that in a recent C-Span appearance he found it striking that all people who called in– Democrats, Republicans and Independents–were supportive of the withdrawal. They were wondering why the money spent in Syria and Afghanistan is not being used at home. Americans seem in favor of withdrawal. Trump’s doctrine for foreign policy looks like restraint: minimizing the use of military force in some areas which he sees not as a strategic interest, such as the Middle East and Asia.
Yet the US is not talking about bringing the 2000 troops back home. Youssef said they are thinking of placing them in Iraq, Kuwait, and other neighboring countries. The risk in this is that when the US is not present, and instead relying on Kurds who feel abandoned, the ability to understand the situation and shape events shrinks. Russia and Iran have long-standing influence in Syria. Neither the US presence nor withdrawal will affect them much. The US is not the dominant force Syria, as the Israeli strikes against Iran and its proxies there suggest. Youssef too noted a major change in how the US makes decisions. In the past, the US deliberated all possible options and the costs associated with them, and then announce its policies. Now it’s the opposite. The policy is announced first, and deliberation comes later.
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Pompeo pontificates
Secretary of State Pompeo took the occasion of his speech in Cairo today to assert what few in the Middle East believe: that the US is a force for good in the region. Offering little evidence for this assertion that would be convincing to anyone but Middle Eastern autocrats, he instead focused on criticizing the Obama Administration.
He criticized it for failing to respond adequately to Sunni extremism, to the Iranian crackdown on the Green Revolution, and to Bashar al Assad. He also praised President Trump for destroying the Islamic State (ignoring completely Obama’s role in that fight) and for bombing Syria when it used chemical weapons (to little effect). The message was clear: American foreign policy is going to be unfailingly partisan. No more non-partisanship at the water’s edge. That’s for sissies.
Iran, Pompeo suggested while vaunting his evangelical credentials, is evil. He reviewed the full array of US efforts to counter Tehran, ignoring US withdrawal from the nuclear deal and its negative implications for relations with Europe and its impact on America’s credibility in future nonproliferation efforts. He ignored the lack of progress in getting Tehran to renegotiate the agreement, which is what he has been pleading for.
While acknowledging President Trump’s decision to withdraw from Syria and underlining that Middle Eastern partners will need to do more, Pompeo reiterated America’s maximal demands without considering the means available. The US won’t provide assistance to Syria until Iran withdraws and a political transition is irreversible. He also challenged Hizbollah and Iranian dominance of Lebanon, promised to work for peace in Yemen, and pledged an agreement on Israel and Palestine.
As Council on Foreign Relations President Richard Haass put it,
.
@SecPompeo articulated ambitious goals-to expel every last Iranian boot from Syria, to reduce Hizballah’s missile arsenal, to help build an Iraq free of Iranian influence-while backing reduced US presence in the Middle East. No policy can succeed with ends and means so divorced.
In concluding, Pompeo claimed that the US had never been an oppressor or empire-builder. That betrayed a serious lack of education on American history, especially in the Western Hemisphere, and insensitivity to how Washington is viewed in the Middle East, where US interventions are often viewed as imperial. Pompeo pledged allegiance to all the autocrats of the region except Iran’s and ignored even the murder of Jamal Khashoggi. How should Middle Easterners who want more open societies and freedom of expression feel about that?
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Risk rises
2019 has a particular significance: it is the year Republicans need to decide whether they will go into the 2020 presidential election with Donald Trump as their candidate, or not.
There is no serious possibility of a primary challenge or an internal party coup. Trump has demonstrated complete command of the party apparatus, including its major funders. He has given them enough of what Republicans traditionally want: judges who can be relied upon to protect property, law enforcement, and fetuses as well as tax cuts for the very wealthy and white nationalism (aka supremacy) for the hoi polloi. It’s a powerful combination because it finds support in less populated states and rural areas that are overweight in the Electoral College.
There are two other possibilities:
Amendment 25* of the constitution, which allows the vice president to lead an effort to remove a president for inability to carry out the functions of the office, provided the effort can win support from half the cabinet and a 2/3 vote in each house of Congress. Trump is dottering: unable to walk the 250 yards from the White House to Blair House across Pennsylvania Avenue, inarticulate to the point of incoherence, and obviously overweight and unhealthy.
But Trump’s cabinet is loyalist, especially with the departure of Secretary of Defense Mattis (and the earlier departure of Secretary of State Tillerson). Ben Carson would join a risky rebellion in the cabinet? Matthew Whitaker, the unqualified acting Attorney General who couldn’t tell the truth about his college academic achievements? Mike Pompeo, who has pledged he’ll keep fighting for conservative social issues until the Rapture?
Impeachment and conviction isn’t much more likely. The new House majority will be Democratic and might easily find the votes to impeach (accuse) Trump of “high crimes and misdemeanors.” But the Senate, where a 2/3 majority would be required to convict, remains solidly in Republican hands. Impeachment without conviction and removal from office is not a winning wicket. The Republicans tried that with Bill Clinton and found themselves with the short end of the stick.
But there is an added factor in 2019: Special Counsel Mueller’s investigation. We don’t know what it will eventually produce, or when, but we do know what it has produced already: five Trump aides, including his first National Security Adviser, have struck plea deals and a couple of dozen Russian operatives have been indicted, in addition to the conviction of Trump’s campaign chair on non-campaign related financial charges. Some will try to deflect attention from the guilty pleas by saying they are “only” for lying to the FBI. That’s silly. We all know it is a crime to lie to the FBI. If someone does, it means he is willing to risk years in jail to avoid telling the truth. Lying to the FBI suggests an underlying felony.
The role of the president in all this is still unclear, and in any event Justice Department guidance does not permit indictment of a president in office. But that does not mean Mueller can’t recommend indictment in the report he is expected to file. The indictment won’t go forward–Whitaker or his replacement is there to stop it–but the recommendation itself would have a dramatic political impact. Even a strong conclusion could do likewise. New York State’s attorney general has already concluded that the Trump Foundation demonstrated “a shocking pattern of illegality.” What if it turns out his campaign was likewise a criminal enterprise, one that allowed or even encouraged a foreign power to subvert the 2016 election?
So I’m thinking we don’t really know what 2019 will bring. The government shutdown is already scrambling the political scene. Trump is sending distress signals and looking for a deal, by lowering the definition of a border wall as well as how much money he needs for it. The Democrats aren’t biting, yet. Nor are the Chinese, whose retaliation against Trump’s tariff war is devastating soybean and other farmers who supported Trump in 2016. Faced with pressure from Trump not to raise rates, the Fed has asserted its independence and proceeded. The stock market is “in correction” and highly volatile. The economy looks like it is heading for the end of the slow but steady Obama boom.
January will bring the launch of multiple House investigations into the Administration’s malfeasance as well as the 2016 campaign. A quick pullout of US troops from Syria this winter could lead to a major clash there between Turkey and Syria, with Arab and Kurdish paramilitaries allies respectively. The proposed drawdown of troops from Afghanistan could embolden the Taliban and wreck the prospects for a negotiated end to its 17-year war. Continuation of the trade wars will raise prices to American consumers and lower US exports, slowing an economy already towards the end of the business cycle.
I dare not go past that to the spring. While the US remains safer and more prosperous than ever before, the uncertainties Trump generates are also greater than ever before. 2019 looks to be a year of rising risk.
*I originally said “Article.” Apologies for the error. There’s a reason I’m not a lawyer.
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The disgrace
A presidency that has known few happy days is at a nadir, though it may well go lower. Russia and Iran are celebrating the American withdrawal from Syria, which President Trump decided to please Turkey. Ankara will now attack the Kurds who allied themselves with the US to fight ISIS successfully. The President has consequently lost a universally respected Defense Secretary as well as a capable lead for the diplomatic campaign against ISIS.
The economy is shaky. The stock market is correcting and the Fed is raising rates. Recession before the 2020 election is increasingly likely. The trade wars with China and Europe continue with no end in sight, devastating American agriculture and some American manufacturing. The budget deficit is exploding due to an ill-conceived tax cut for the very wealthy. Trump hasn’t spent already appropriated funds for border security, but he is demanding more for an unnecessary and extraordinarily expensive wall on the Mexican border, partly closing down the government through Christmas.
This is a record of unparalleled chaos and failure, even without mentioning the new North Korean missile sites and the Iranian refusal to discuss either their missiles or Tehran’s regional power projection until Trump reverses his decision to exit the Iran nuclear deal. Pyongyang and Tehran represent serious threats to US interests that Trump has no strategy to counter.
Nor has he been any more effective in changing Russian behavior, which the Congress and his Administration continue to sanction without any admission by the President of Moscow’s wrongdoing. The “deal of the century” Trump promised on Palestine his negotiators have botched completely. America’s diplomacy and international reputation have rarely known worse, more incoherent and less effective, moments.
What can be done?
Little is the serious answer. Even when the Democrats take control of the House little more than a week from now, they will have no ability to fix 90% of what ails the country. Their main role will be oversight: making clear to the public what the real situation is through hearings and reports. Beyond that, they can refuse to sign on to stupidities like the border wall, but no legislation can pass the Senate without a good bit of Republican support, especially if overriding a veto will be necessary. The Democrats cannot force the US back into the Iran nuclear deal, the Paris climate change agreement, or the Trans Pacific Partnership, all of which held substantial advantages for the US.
Meanwhile, Special Counsel Mueller’s investigation has produced indictments, guilty pleas, and convictions of high-ranking Trump campaign and administration officials as well as Russian intelligence operatives. There is no longer even a slight doubt that Moscow campaigned in 2016 in favor of Donald Trump, likely tipping the balance in his favor in key Midwest states and Pennsylvania. Trump is obsessed with legitimacy, as well he should be. He is not a fairly elected president, even if we accept the inequities of the Electoral College. He is the product of blatant, widespread, and illegal foreign assistance. We need barely mention Trump’s own illegal campaign contributions as well as his criminal use of Trump Foundation resources.
I doubt though that we have reached bottom. Still to come are revelations about massive Russian and Saudi financing for Trump real estate, as well as indictments of his co-conspirators in stealing and publishing emails. Trump really hasn’t hidden these things, but a report from Mueller that details them will be more than interesting. It will raise questions about whether a felon should be sleeping and watching TV in the White House, where he does little else except brood. If his former National Security Adviser can go to prison for years, why can’t the President be indicted and tried?
The short answer is that the toadies he picks as Attorney General won’t allow it, claiming that Justice Department regulations they could change prohibit it. Trump can no longer, with a Democratic majority in the House, avoid impeachment, if the Mueller report suggests it. But in the Senate he still has not only a majority, but one that hesitates to criticize, never mind convict. Trump has humiliated Mitch McConnell and his cohort repeatedly, but the Senate Republicans remain steadfastly loyal. It is hard to picture how conviction would gain a 2/3 majority it needs in the upper chamber.
The only remedy for this shambolic and bozotic presidency is likely at the polls, less than two years hence. There are no guarantees, but Trump’s path to re-election is narrowing, especially if recession happens. The disgrace is in the White House, not in the country.
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The missing piece
President Trump’s sudden decision to withdraw ground troops from Syria has prompted widespread condemnation as well as the resignations of Defense Secretary Mattis and top anti-ISIS coordinator McGurk. Jim Jeffrey, Syria envoy, can’t be far behind. Certainly the manner of the decision merits dismay. Challenged by Turkish President Erdogan to get out of the way of a Turkish operation against Syrian Kurds whom the US has armed and used against ISIS, Trump pulled the plug on the several thousand US special forces in eastern Syria without any serious consultation with his national security advisers or America’s allies and against their collective wisdom. The message to American allies and adversaries alike is that Washington is unreliable and weak. Tehran and Moscow are gleeful. ISIS has already launched a major attack against the Kurds.
In evaluating this decision, we need to distinguish its manner from its substance. The way Trump did this is not just reprehensible but irresponsible. But whether it was better for US interests to stay in Syria or leave is far less clear.
The US gained control of one-third of Syria, along with its Kurdish and Arab allies in the Syrian Democratic Forces, as a consequence of its operations against ISIS, in particular in Raqqa. The result was a devastated city. Staying would have meant stabilizing and eventually reconstructing it and other population centers. That process had begun, but hadn’t gotten very far, before the President’s announcement on Saturday. The Administration had gotten the Saudis and others to ante up several hundred million dollars for the purpose, but more than that was eventually going to be needed. Withdrawal avoids that responsibility.
Jim Jeffrey’s strategy, as I understood it, was to try to make Raqqa and the surrounding area livable and even attractive relative to the regime’s autocratic control of most of the rest of Syria. That would have given the US continued opportunities to do damage to ISIS as well as leverage over the political process, enabling Washington to trade withdrawal for commitments from the regime, Turkey, Iran, and Russia. Jim was aiming for complete Iranian withdrawal and beginning of a political transition, but likely would have had to settle for less. A longer stay in Syria would also have given the US time to make arrangements with Turkey and the Kurds to avoid their clash in the aftermath of withdrawal and continued commitment to the fight against ISIS.
This was a pretty good strategy, even if the US were to be forced to settle for much less than its stated goals. We might at least have gotten something on release of prisoners, accounting for the disappeared, protection of civilians, withdrawal of non-Arab Shia militias, and maybe something on revising the constitution to reduce the powers of the Syrian security agencies and holding internationally supervised elections.
President Trump preferred an abrupt withdrawal. In this he is not unlike his predecessor. President Obama did not want to go into Syria and tried to limit the numbers of American troops there. He withdrew from Iraq before it had been adequately stabilized. American presidents do not like what they pejoratively call “nationbuilding.” It is admittedly a difficult, expensive, and time-consuming process. Witness Afghanistan, from which Trump is said to have decided to withdraw much of the American troops presence. The war there started 17 years ago. No one would pretend that Kabul is yet capable of containing the Taliban and extremist presence there.
Avoiding long-term commitments of this sort is understandable, especially if the maneuver is done with adequate preparation, without undermining friends and allies, and without emboldening enemies. The way to achieve those prerequisites is through diplomacy. That’s what’s missing here.
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